Keto Calculator: The Easy Ketogenic Macro Calculator

Calculate your keto macros in minutes.

The Keto Calculator will help you find the exact amount of carbs, fat, and protein you need to reach your goal weight through the ketogenic diet, whether you want to lose, gain, or maintain your weight.

Input Your Protein Ratio

Guide to picking your protein ratio

To gain muscle, the protein ratio should be between 0.8 to 1.2 grams per lb of lean body mass (1.7 to 2.3 grams per kg LBM)

Input Your Total Carb Intake

Input the grams of carbs you want to consume on a daily basis

Net Carbs (g)

Your Daily Macronutrient Goals

--Protein (g)

--Carbs (g)

--Fat (g)

--Total Calories

Results Summary

Worried that this is too much protein? Most keto macro calculators will tell you that your protein needs to be only 10-15% of your total calories. We don’t agree. Check out the video below by our founder Dr. Anthony Gustin to understand why he made this macro calculator with higher than most protein recommendations:

Got your macros? Great!Read on to learn more about how the keto calculator works, how to track your macros, and what foods to eat to hit your macros:

First, you have the option to pick the Standard Ketogenic Diet calculator or the Specialized Macronutrients calculator. The first one is simpler and assumes you want to consume the standard percentage of carbs, fats, and protein in a normal ketogenic diet.

The second one lets you write down specific carb and protein targets if you happen to need a different macro ratio.

When To Use The Standard Ketogenic Diet Calculator

Use the standard keto calculator if:

You’re new to the ketogenic diet

Your goal is simply to lose, gain, or maintain your weight

You don’t know the macro ratio you need to stay in ketosis

This option takes the guesswork off your hands and assumes a standard keto macro ratio. It’s the best option for almost all keto-ers.

When To Use The Specialized Macronutrient Calculator

Choose the specialized calculator only when:

You know exactly how many grams of carbs and protein you should aim for

Let’s take a closer look at how the specialized calculator can help you if you’re doing a variation of the standard keto diet:

The Cyclical Ketogenic Diet (CKD)

A CKD involves a long low-carb period followed by a short higher-carb period. It works by following a ketogenic diet for 5-6 days and then eating high-carb for just 1-2 days.

This modality helps endurance athletes, body builders, or people with highly active lifestyles recover glycogen stores quickly so they can sustain their performance, without having to eat carbs constantly [*].

You can use the standard keto calculator to find your macros for the low carb days and then use the specialized calculator to input a higher target of carbs for the high carb days.

CKD usually requires about 50 grams of carbohydrates per day on keto days and about 450-600 grams of carbohydrates during the high-carb days.

The High-Protein Ketogenic Diet

This version is just like the standard ketogenic diet, but with additional amounts of protein.

You can use the specialized calculator to input a higher target of protein.

For instance, you can try to modify the standard ratio (70% of fat and 25% of protein) by 10%, so you eat 60% of fat and 35% of protein instead. The carbs remain the same (5%).

Once you’ve picked the keto calculator that’s right for your needs, you have to add basic details:

Step #2: Enter Your Details: Gender, Age, Height, and Weight

The keto calculator uses your gender, age, height, and weight to find something called your basal metabolic rate (BMR), which is the amount of energy you spend per unit of time while resting.

Basically, how much energy you burn while doing absolutely nothing.

This calculator uses the Mifflin-St.Jeor Formula to find your BMR, which is among the most accurate formulas. One study found it shows a strong correlation between the predicted BMRs and the actual BMRs[*].

This is why your details affect your BMR:

Gender: Body composition is different between men and women.

Age: Your RMR decreases with age as your muscle mass declines, especially after age 30.

Body Fat %

Your body fat percentage is used to determine your lean body mass and contributes to a more accurate estimation of your TDEE.

This helps the keto calculator figure out how many calories from protein you need per day to lose weight without reducing your muscle mass.

If you don’t know your body fat percentage, you can measure it at home, the gym, or in a health facility. These are the two most accurate methods:

Skinfold Calipers:Skin calipers are affordable and easy to get on Amazon. Your local gym most likely has them too. A skinfold caliper works by pinching one area of your skin that folds easily (like your belly and back), in three to ten different areas of your body to measure your subcutaneous fat. That measurement is then used in a formula to calculate your body fat percentage. If you’ve never done this before, let a physician or coach do it first and teach you how to read the measurements accurately so you can do it at home next times.

DEXA (Dual-Energy X-Ray Absorptiometry):If you can afford it, a DEXA scan will give you the most accurate results. A DEXA is an X-ray treatment that measures body composition and can detect bone mineral density, lean body mass, and fat mass with great accuracy. However, they can only be done on a health facility and a comprehensive session can cost up to $160.

Other methods at home like online calculators and bioelectrical scales can be wildly inaccurate, so avoid these.

There are other techniques done in health facilities like air-displacement plethysmography and hydrostatic weighing, but these are pricey as well and not as thorough as a DEXA scan.

It’s recommended you measure your body fat percentage every six to eight weeks.

Protein Ratio

Now that you know your body fat %, you can measure your lean body mass (LBM) and then pick your protein intake accordingly.

Your LBM is simply the remaining percentage that isn’t body fat.

Here’s an example:

If you weigh 150 pounds (68 kg) and your body fat percentage is 20%, then your lean body mass is 80%, which in pounds would be:

In this example, you would input 72-96 grams of protein (0.60*120 lb or 0.80*120 lb).

To gain muscle mass, the protein ratio should be between 0.8 to 1.2 grams per lb of LBM (1.7 to 2.3 grams per kg LBM).

In this example, you would input 96-144 grams (0.80*120 lb or 1.2*120 lb)

Total Carb Intake

Here you simply input the number of carbs you want to eat. It’s recommended you leave it in the standard range of 20-50g of net carbs.

Finally, the keto calculator takes all this input and creates the perfect macro targets for your goals.

Your Keto Macros Explained

Let’s recall that for the classical ketogenic diet, your food intake will be:

70-80% of calories from fats

20-25% of calories from protein

5-10% of calories from net carbs (Net carbs are the grams of carbohydrates in a food minus the grams of fiber in it)

With this distribution, a person eating 2,500 calories per day will eat:

208 grams of fat

125 grams of protein

30 grams of carbs

However, since your personal calorie intake can be lower or higher than this, the specific grams of each macronutrient will look different for you.

Carbohydrate Intake

For most people, a range of 20-50 grams of carbohydrate intake per day is ideal for the keto diet. Some people can go as high as 80 grams per day to stay in ketosis, but the majority should stay in the 20-50g range for best results. Each person’s metabolism is different.

If you used the standard keto calculator, then your target carbs should be in this optimal range.

Carbs are the easiest nutrients to overeat, so it’s important you read labels to avoid hidden sugars and eat only low-glycemic foods that let you stay in the target range, for example:

Recommended reading:

Protein Intake

Protein should be kept to adequate proportions. Eating around 1.5 to 2g of protein per kg of lean body mass (0.68 – 1g of protein per lb. of lean body mass) is ideal. Your protein intake goal will only be higher if you want to build muscle, lift heavy weights almost every day, or follow a high-protein keto diet.

Tracking Your Macros

The best way to hit your keto macros is to measure your daily food intake. You can easily do this through an online app where you log everything you ate during the day.

My Fitness Pal is a clear favorite in the fitness space because it has a massive nutrient database.

You don’t have to measure your macros every day of your life, but it’s important you do it for the first few months until you’re able to accurately hit your macros without needing to measure every meal.

How To Know If You’re In Ketosis

Eating according to the macros the keto calculator gives you will help you enter and stay in ketosis, so you can use fat as energy and accelerate your natural weight loss (if that’s your goal).

However, you might come out of ketosis without realizing it if you exceed your carb intake.

To make sure you’re in ketosis, you’ll have to test the ketone levels in your blood. There are urine and breath tests to detect ketones too, but they’re not nearly as accurate as blood tests.

Blood tests are the most reliable way to test ketone levels because ketones can’t get diluted in your blood (like they can in urine) and blood carries the main ketone your body produces: BHB (beta-hydroxybutyrate). BHB is the only ketone that gets turned into ATP, the energy molecule.

The most accurate tool to measure BHB levels in your blood is the Precision Xtra meter. You’ll have to draw blood from your finger every time you want to measure your ketones, so keep that in mind.

The blood level of BHB is measured in millimolar concentration, or “mmol”. Studies have shown the most optimal ranges of BHB levels for benefits of ketosis are between 1.5-3.0 mmol, however this may vary per person.

Taking exogenous ketones can also help you stay in ketosis for longer and boost your BHB levels.

Recommended reading:

Foods and Meals to Hit Your Keto Macros

As Benjamin Franklin once said “by failing to prepare, you are preparing to fail.”

The best way to set yourself up for success is to source healthy keto-friendly foods that nourish your body and help put you in ketosis. This means you’ll have to give your grocery list and pantry a makeover.